It seems to have so far escaped OSNews' notice (if the top few hits for a site-search for 'Steam' is any indication) that Steam for Linux is now in Open Beta; you can get the Linux steam client from steampowered.com. So far, they appear to only be making an Ubuntu .deb available, and the client will require closed-source GPU drivers in order to work.

It's doubly sad because the there's no inherent reason why the open source model (and perhaps combined with creative commons) shouldn't work for creating new and innovative games.

I'd say there kind of is in practice: creating a compelling story, designing the interaction mechanics between the player and the game-world in a meaningful way, real interface design, doing all the graphical and audio assets -- ie. all very much artistic assets -- pay quite well in the real world. In addition, creating such assets tend to be really, really time-consuming, much more so than cranking out code, and therefore such just may not be deemed worth the peoples' efforts and time.

It's not the amount of coders available that is the problem, it's the lack of everyone else. Even a project leader with a well-defined, uncompromising vision could give these F/OSS - games some much-needed direction, but as it stands, these projects are mostly collections of random, shallow ideas thrown together.

pay quite well in the real world. In addition, creating such assets tend to be really, really time-consuming, much more so than cranking out code, and therefore such just may not be deemed worth the peoples' efforts and time.

True but coding pays pretty well too, probably better in general than creative pursuits.
Besides, a lot of artists release some of their work under public domain or creative commons so there's really no reason these people couldn't contribute to OSS games in the same way.

Maybe it's just a lack of communication or effort from the coding camp to actually get creative people onboard.